Ego Interference

So you are hooked on making beads, or jewelry, or pots or pictures. Whatever it is, you just love making it and your friends and family tell you to sell your work. Should you or shouldn't you?

There are many, many issues to think about before you take that step, but one important one is whether or not you can separate you from your work. Can you look at your product as a "widget" rather than an extension of your heart and soul? Because frankly, in the end, that is how the world is looking at it. Do they like it enough to buy it for the price you are selling it? Can they justify the purchase? Or if they are a buyer for a retail outlet, can they sell it? Will their customers buy it? Does it reflect their customer's taste and pocketbook?

So you have an appointment to go meet with a shop owner. You go in with your very best work. You need to be ready to answer the questions they will be sure to ask about price, what sells best, etc, etc. But, you also need to be ready to hear any feedback you receive from the buyer. You may not like what they have to say, or even agree with it. But, if you can't separate your ego from your product, and look at it as a "widget", you should not sell your work.

You may hear that your finishing needs improvement, or that your price is too high, or that your designs are not ones that will sell well for them. Heck, they might not like your color palette, or might try to redesign your line. You can NOT take any of this personally. It is their opinion. Some of it might be on target, and some of it might be just one person's opinion. With time you can sort that out. But if you can't hear what they have to say because your ego got in the way and shut down your hearing, you may miss a valuable lesson or two. And you may lose a valuable resource....an honest sounding board. Someone who will share their experience and opinions with you about your work.

It is a tricky dance we have to play when we sell our art. Part of us goes into the creation. We need to change hats when we step out of the studio and try to sell our work. If we feel like it is cutting off an arm if it doesn't go to a good home, or if we can't hear the truth about our pricing or finishing or color choices.....even if it comes over and over again.....then we will not be able to effectively sell our work.

We are selling "widgets". And like all widgets there needs to be demand in order to sell the work. And it has to be priced right. Some colors will sell better than others. If you hate purple and blue, and love orange, it might hurt your sales. If you can accept this limitation, fine. But recognize it for what it is. The market sets the rules. We need to decide if we are willing to play the game.

Not every suggestion you get is worthwhile. A high price for one store might be fine somewhere else. But if the same feedback is coming over and over again, perhaps there is something there that you need to pay attention to. Leave the ego in the studio. Sit down as a business person and evaluate your "product". Is it saleable? Can you make it saleable? Can you live with what that entails? The answer to any of these might be no. And that is fine. Just recognize what that means and be willing to accept it for what it is.

Being an artist and a business person is a mental juggling act sometimes. But any entrepreneur puts their heart and soul into their product. Until they are able to separate their heart and soul from the product when they bring it to market, success will probably be elusive. It is not necessarily about changing our product to meet the market demand. It is more about being able to accept any limitations and additional challenges that our current strategy may impose on us.

Lessons from Parenting

When did parent become a verb anyway??

We all learn about being a parent from our own parents. We talk about what we are NOT going to do as parents. We repeat patterns, consciously or unconsciously from generation after generation. Nothing has taught me more about myself than being a parent.

My girls are 11 and 13. Teen and tween. Rapidly growing up into the women they will become. And as they do, I am being forced to look inward at my own experiences, values and dreams and sort those out from those of my kids.

Last month my oldest daughter attended a camp sponsored by Tufts Veterinary School....Adventures in Veterinary Medicine. When she was a little girl she loved dogs in theory, and was absolutely terrified of them in reality. She would literally climb up me when we were out for a walk and a dog was anywhere near by. This girl has come a long way. She and her friend run a pet sitting/dog walking business. At camp, she volunteered to put her hand up the bottom of a cow to feel for the baby. My frightened, timid little girl faced her fears and stepped up to the task when no one else would. I could not have been more proud of her. I could see the dream she has light up her face as she talked about each day's experience. At thirteen, she already has a good idea of what she wants in life, and is already pursuing it.

Around the same time, she got a letter in the mail, inviting her to participate in a pageant. The beauty kind. The kind that makes me shudder. She "really, really, really" wanted to do this. My husband agreed to take her and her sister to the informational meeting. We thought that would be the end of it. Nope. They were "accepted" into the pageant after an interview. Now they had to raise money to participate, and they had very little time to do so. I was still not very enthusastic about it all. A pageant. If my kids do a pageant, does that make me a "pageant mom", and all that entails?? Yuck!

But then I had to pause and remember. Way, way back when. When I would watch the Miss America pageants as a little girl and wonder. But my dreams were kept firmly in check by those around me. I was ready to repeat that pattern. But I had to ask myself, why am I so ready to support her dream of being a vet, but so unwilling to support this? Is it like Barbie? Let them play with it, and get it out of their system. By quashing this dream now, what message am I sending her? That dreams need parental approval before they can be pursued?? Is that the parent I want to be?

As uncomfortable as it has been, I have had to support her in this dream. They have had to work hard to get sponsors, and it has been a valuable lesson in sales. We do practice "interviews" with them at the dinner table. I think I am teaching my kids how to become a politician. Have a story that you want to get across about yourself, and no matter what the question is, find a way to work it around to that. We wrote a press release, and today they had their pictures and a little blurb about them in the paper. That was tempered by the light of day...."what are my friends going to think..?"

Sunday is the pageant. There is some excitement and some wondering about what they got themselves into. And I have learned a lesson. The only dreams we can be sure about are our own. And the only thing we can hope for from those around us is that they support those dreams rather than quash them. My dreams cannot about what my children do with their lives. Those are their dreams to live. All I can do is to support them as best I can, and pick up the pieces when necessary. Let's hope I don't have to learn the lesson again and again.

In Praise of Production

I often hear the comment...."I could never do this as a business. I could never stand to make the same thing over and over again." The very idea of becoming a machine, cranking out the same thing, over, and over, and over,.....again, and again, and again.......sends people scurrying in all directions.

I used to be of the same mindset.

Yes, it is true. I uttered those very same words. But now I live on the other side of them, and I have to sing the praises of production. Yes, there are times it is monotonous, and I don't want to make another crane! "No, no, please! Don't make me do it!" But those are brief and fleeting moments in the grand scheme of things. So what is so great about production work?

1. You learn. You learn lots and lots of things about the nuances of the material you are working with. Things you would never learn or understand if each time you sat down to create you were doing something different. In the 1oth piece you may learn some way to do a maneuver more efficiently. On the 100th piece you may find the piece more finished and refined than the first, without even knowing for sure how you got there. You learn subtleties about the limitations of the material, or how to work with the material, rather than against it.

2. Every job has it's production aspects. Every job is repetitive to some degree. It is where "experience" comes from. When I was a marketing analyst, I used to do market studies of various areas of the country trying to determine the growth prospects, and which industries would predominate. Every area of the country I studied was different. The competition, the industries, the product mix, etc., etc. And yet, each time I began working on a new project I began from the same place. Gathering the data. Putting it through the same types of analysis. Getting a lay of the land. From there each project diverged, but then it was back to "production"....creating a report with the same general format as those completed in the past.

3. There is comfort in production. There is something nice about just sitting down to make something you are good at making. Knowing the moves. Knowing what to expect. Knowing where to start. You don't need to reinvent the wheel each time. You can just get to work.

4. There is inspiration in production. Yes, inspiration. As your mind is in that relaxed state as you work with your material, you may find an idea pop into your head....that eternal question...."What if?" Nothing feeds creativity like daily, or near daily contact with your work. If you had to sit down and create from scratch each time, it is overwhelming. But as you work with the material each day, you will find the ideas coming to you. The incremental changes to what you do regularly each day can lead to new products and new ideas. The media gets into your bloodstream. You can't help but think about other ideas of what you could do and where you could go with the material.

5. If you are going to try and make a living, isn't it more fun to be doing it with something you love than doing work you hate? I had a "crisis" moment about a year ago. I finally realized that if I got serious about my cranes, there was a market for them. A really good market. But I wasn't sure I wanted to be making hundreds, if not thousands of cranes.

But then I realized, people would pay me to make things from clay. People were finding inspiration in my work. People were connecting to the cranes in ways I never could have seen. How could I not make the cranes? As I expected, demand has been fantastic. I could barely keep up last fall. I gained fifteen new accounts between the end of July and November. Many were re-ordering the cranes multiple times. I was a crane factory.

This might be where some of you say, ...."See, that is what I am talking about! I don't want to be a factory."

But the cranes have brought me cash flow. They have financed my first participation in a wholesale show. Nine out of the the ten new accounts from the ACRE show were people buying cranes. They have generated lots of interest from media. And there are the stories. The personal stories of connections with the cranes. The more cranes I make, the more lives I get a chance to touch.

6. Production is everywhere in our lives. The repetition we want to run from is a part of our lives. Doing the dishes. Sweeping the floor. Picking up the clutter of life. We do it, and then we do it again, and then again, and again. We may not always enjoy it. But sometimes, we may notice that time spent doing the dishes has a certain meditative quality to it. Or when we finish picking up the living room, vaccuuming and dusting, there is some pleasure in seeing the results of our labor. And soon, we will do it again. The laundry, the cooking, the shopping, and on and on. Sometimes we want to run screaming from the room rather than do that task yet again. But it is often the thought of the task that is more distasteful than the actual task, once we get started.

7. Production of a product we don't like making is the real problem. Sometimes when people make the decision that they want to sell their work at shows or through shops, they begin by looking at "what people will buy". You see the questions on discussion boards, "What sells well at shows?" And maybe they get an answer to that question, and they go off and start making the work that will sell. They don't particularly like making it, but they have been told that it is a big seller, and that is what they want,....something that will sell.

This is the production you will grow to hate. You are making something that does not come from you and your heart and voice. You are making it because "it will sell". But it might not sell nearly as well as you think it will because your heart is not in it. You will begin to resent every pen, bead or widget that you make. This is not what you wanted to be doing. You used to have fun working with your media. This is not fun. And you will resent anyone who looks at your work at a show and doesn't buy it. "What is wrong with them?" "This show stinks." Can you feel the bad karma? Pretty soon no one wants to be in your booth. Heck, you don't even want to be in your booth.

Production work that comes from your love of the material, your connection with the work, is what will bring satisfaction. Your enthusiasm will be evident to anyone who sees your work at a show. And you will hear those voices of people who connected with your work as you sit in your studio, making more.

"POP!" That was the sound of a bubble bursting. If the thought of production work is what stops you from moving toward selling your work, maybe you need to look again and rethink your objections. It may not be nearly as objectionable as it first looked.

How Do You Measure the Success of a Show?

So, how do you measure a show? The ACRE wholesale show is over, and I have signed up to do the show again next year. All in all, I would say I had a good show. But how can you measure a show?

The most obvious answer is in the sales. Did you write enough orders to cover your expenses, and make some money? A mistake some artists make is measuring their sales against their booth fee, as if that is the only expense they have in doing the show. The booth fee might be the single largest expense, but it is not the only show expense. For a show that is out of town, you have travel expenses (airfare or mileage, hotel, meals, etc). There are promotional expenses associated with the show (mailings, handouts, press kit, etc.). There may be the cost of shipping your materials. You can be creative and frugal in how you spend your money in these areas, but you can’t do a show without some additional expenses. And certainly don’t forget the cost of producing the product to fill the order (materials, labor, packaging). The booth fee is just one part of your sales expenses. Measuring your sales against only one aspect of your costs can be an expensive mistake.

But what are some other ways to measure the outcome? Here are 5 that I have come up with:

1. For a wholesale show, how many new accounts did you get? In wholesale you can’t measure the show solely by the orders written at the show. A good account will be re-ordering product from you again and again. Over and over, when I would write up an order for a new account this week, it was clear that people were looking for artists and work they could represent over the long haul, not just a one-time order. So that order for a few hundred dollars may be much, much more than that, over time.

2. What other benefits came from the show? Shows are a chance for your work to get exposure. At the ACRE show there were quite a few press people present. I brought just over a dozen press kits to the show, and left them in the show office on set-up day. When I went back to pick them remainders up at the end of the show, eleven had been taken. Not all will end up generating publicity. The half a day spent putting these together was time well invested. I already know about two publications that are interested in featuring my work. That is exposure I could not otherwise afford.

3. Post show sales. Whether it is a retail show or a wholesale show, post show sales are not uncommon. At one show last summer two different people contacted me about purchasing gifts for people who had seen my work at the show.
All those postcards or business cards that get handed out, can mean sales in the long term. I highly recommend having an image of your work on your business cards. Vista Print will print a picture on one side, and your contact info on the other. They are great looking, and better reminders of who you are than just your name and website.

4. Follow-up. The show is not over when the lights are switched off and you start packing up your work. I have cards from galleries who stopped in my booth and were interested in my work, but did not get back to see me during the show. These people are good prospects for potential future sales. Following up with a postcard or phone call in the next few weeks will keep my work in their minds. Certainly not all of them will end up buying my work, and I might even gain a few accounts without lifting a finger. But it never hurts to make that extra effort.

5. Serendipity. I often find myself scouting a show for work for a few of the local galleries that carry my work. Sometimes I see something in another artist’s work that makes me think it would be a good fit for one or more of the galleries I know. I will pass that information along, and perhaps that artist will gain a new account, maybe never knowing why that happened.

I am sure there are more measures of a show…like how well was the show managed? Was it a good fit for your work? Do the location and timing work out for you?

After you get back from a show, take a few minutes to think about the show. What were the high points, and what needs improvement? Can those improvement be made by you, or do they require someone or something else to change? If they require your effort, begin to work toward those changes. If it depends on others to change, you need to decide how critical those issues are, or if you can adapt. Not every show is a good fit for us or our work. And expecting others to change to meet our needs is often a fruitless exercise. It happens, but we can't count on it.

Be sure to celebrate the high points. Without relishing our successes from time to time, there is little point in making the effort. And, give yourself a day off to recover. Shows are draining on many levels, and you may need a day to just relax before you dive right back into the studio. This is advice I have had trouble following in the past, but followed this time. A day spent with my kids was just what I needed.